co-authors are other participants quoted. I haven't changed content of thr replies, but quoted it part by part in my replies, interspersing each reply after relevant part. Sometimes I have also changed the order of replies with my retorts, so as to prioritate logical/topical over temporal/chronological connexions. That has also involved conflating more than one message. I have also left out mere insults.

Russian Orthodox sources from same time (under Lithuanian supremacy or under the Czars) would have given similar age limits.

Resist Meta-Man!

Evolutionary biologists are discussing whether we have passed or will be passing the next evolutionary big step. Resumée of big steps so far - according to evolution:

1.) self reproducing molecules join hands in protocaryatide cells;

2.) those in eucaryatide cells;

3.) those in many celled animals;

4.) ants, bees and maybe now men join hands in hives;

5.) not to mention that all the train companies ruined by Vanderbilt, all the petrol companies ruined by Rockefeller and so on were bought up by the capitalists who ruined them - unlike the other steps one that has really been ascertained.

If humanity becomes a hive, it is termed a "meta man"*. Of which men all over earth, domestic animals, machines, buildings, textiles, satellite communications all over the globe are organs, just as DNA inmitochondria, mitochondria in our cells, our cell in ourselves. The final steps to meta man would include:

a) mankind stopping wars between its men,

b) mankind regulating the procreation of men,

c) the development of a consciousness of mankind, that is really the consciousness of noone in particular, reached by immediate majority votes on the smallest details of things which in their whole are beyond - or are put beyond - single men.

This last step is supposed to be a parallel to the human consciousness being the consciousness of no brain cell in particular, only the sum of all brain cells in general.

But this is not what human consciousness is, man being - unlike brain cells and majority votes - endowed with reason, and it will not work like this for "meta man". The elimination of wars and the central control of human fertility - on lines suggested by Monsanto seeds, that will grow and yield fruit only for one generation, after which next year's seed will have to be bought from Monsanto - this will, if at all, not happen because all humans vote through these losses of independence, case for case, though it could be fooled into voting through the principle or a seemingly reasonable application of it in a panicked situation: no, this will, if at all, be controlled by an elite that considers itself to be for mankind what the brain is for a single man.

The simile between man and his organs on one hand, society and its men on the other, is ancient. So is the simile between a leg that has to be amputated for the good of man and a criminal that has to be executed - maybe hunted down first - for the good of society. It was older than the Church and it was used by both Christ and St Paul about the Church: the parallel to execution being excommunication. The problem begins when the simile, a biological picture for non-biological things, is introduced into biology and taken for the biological principle for a new animal. When birth, food, security of life or death of individual men all depend on the BIOLOGICAL needs of a single animal humanity that is fiction - or a misused concept that parodies and hides the real biological needs. Would you like to be "amputated" - killed, starved or sterilised - because you did not dedicate yourself whole-heartedly to serve the hive? Resist "meta man". Resist the beast.

*Source for the speculations: www.pm-magazin.de the paper version of January 2005 issue.

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Paris or Königsberg, Robert Barron?

I was just watching the Theological Robber Baron's talk on beauty, which is a beautiful talk and which I interrupted in order to resume it after I had read Evangelii Gaudium, which so far I have not.

In it, Robert Baron (none other) says he was in Paris for his doctoral thesis in Theology.

Now, this means you were in fact studying where St Thomas Aquinas taught.

But, opening this video, it seems you could as well have been studying in Königsberg for all the accuracy of your Thomism.

Of course the philosopher seeks empiricism!

St Thomas' contribution as compared to Plato was to give a bit more room to empiricism.

And since Geocentrism is Empirical (whatever Heliocentrism is, it is not direct experience), he duly deduced a first and outermost mover of all the finite numbers of the layers of the universe in its daily course around Earth, that first mover being of course God.

Note, since Thomists claiming to be such have abandoned Geocentrism, Prima Via, which St Thomas himself thought and taught as the most obvious one has become displaced by them and in their opinion by Tertia Via.

Phil Chalmers

St Thomas was betrayed.

He wrote enormous amounts of theology and philosophy which many humans thought was brilliant and wise and full of truth.

The Holy Spirit visited him and showed him what his work was worth. St Thomas then knew his work was as worthless as straw, he is quoted as saying just that, and ordered it in his last will and testament to be destroyed.

This was not done.

I cannot even imagine what damage has been done by such an act of quenching the Holy Spirit. Don't bother to quote Aquinas, it is stale straw from many yesterdays ago.﻿

Hans-Georg Lundahl

That his writings were straw as to his personal action, is possible.

I don't think so, but seeing the vision, it is possible.

It is also possible that he foresaw how he would be really betrayed by "Thomists" like Barron. For instance "omni artifici de sua arte loquenti credendum est" misapplied by expertise idolaters.

We have more reason to believe the universal Church than his private revelation, as to worth of studying his work.

Some detractors are even Kantian.﻿

II

0:50 - 1:00
"see, there's a qualitative difference between science and philosophy : science seeks after events and objects and phenomena within the empirically observable and measurable universe"

Well, the universe is not measurable empirically, but if you take this as being a differentia specifica for science as opposed to philosophy (a distinction St Thomas would have denied), that means you deny this to philosophy, and you want to construct all philosophy around pure logic applied to itself without reference to the empirical.

If however some level of metaphysics does start out with the empirical, then science is directly relevant for it, in so far as it is correct.

And this would mean, we either accept the metaphysical conclusions of Hawking, or we refute him on some of his science.

3:21
"I'm the one supposed to be defending old pre-scientific views of the world"

Yes, you are.

When you start doing that, you are a robber baron no more.

First of all, there is no such thing as "pre-scientific". Those who use the word are referring to views on "scientific" topics before there was what they consider in their field a "scientific community".

A "pre-scientific" view is all views including the latest before that one which started the academic collaboration now referred to as "science".

For instance, in Indo-European linguistics, considering pater and father, it is "scientific" to speak about a "sound law" like p > f in Germanic, even if it would be equally possible that f > p in non-Germanic and even if a Proto-Indo-European Lautstand is simply not empirically accessible.

On the other hand, speaking of a "sound correspondence" like Latin/Greek p = Germanic f, which is strictly empirically verifiable (pater, father, piscis, fish, caper, hafr (OE for goat or buck), apo, af / of / off, hyper, over ... you'll need to accept some wavering between f and v sounds at this point, but that is empirically verifiable too), speaking of "sound correspondences" is "pre-scientific".

Second, quite a few of the "pre-scientific" views would be those of scholasticism.

Third, quite a lot of scholasticism works much better on the theological and philosophical level, if you refrain from divorcing it from "pre-scientific" views on the empirical or more close to empirical one.

For instance, Prima Via looks a lot better as proof for one God if there is one unified movement of one whole universe around Earth. Replace that with Heliocentrism and multiple solar systems ... well, you see how Giordano Bruno got in trouble. He was a Dominican, he was familiar with Saint Thomas, so, arguably, his apostasy was motivated by combining Prima Via with Heliocentrism and multiple solar systems in an infinite cosmos.

Obviously, Bruno's Heliocentrism, unlike Newton's, would also count as "pre-scientific" for the guys who tout that word. I don't mean you should defend ALL "pre-scientific" views of the world.

It's a bit how some call Pius XII Hitler's Pope. He was. And he withdrew from Hitler the correction in Humani generis unitas, which he never published as an encyclical.

Reminds me, I ought to read that one.

IV

Before 5:04

Things in the world are contingent.

Not admitted by that side.

On a view which could have been also that of Stephen Hawking, and certainly was that of a lot of other atheist science believers and still is:

IF we had all data about the initial state of the universe and IF we had all data about how causes interact and IF we had infinite time and patience - THEN from the initial state of the universe one could deduce Bishop Barron being a Bishop and Stephen Hawking being an atheist.

And the most obvious answer in defense of contingency is - we look contingent. We look as contingent as the universe looks geocentric.

We deem ourselves contingent because of this look, because this prima facie probability of contingency is one we have not refuted.

Hence the problem with divorcing sane philosophy from empirical data, from experience, from the prima facie look of things.

Note, whenever on some one item we do not accept the prima facie look of sth as true, it is because we deduce from the prima facie look of a lot of related things.

Contingent is not just depending on the necessary, but depending on the necessary in such a way that the necessary was not under necessity to produce the contingent item.

"Hawking" would admit that we are in a sense contingent on sth else, but he would not admit there was any freedom in that something else, and therefore would not admit there is any real contingency in us. We would on that view be the ephemeral shape of sth very permanent.

If we look at Tertia Via, divorced from Prima, we could arrive to ultimate necessary being in the universe being a freedom, like God - or we could equally arrive to it being an unfreedom, the Ananke he believed in.

V

6:02 "and this is precisely what Catholic philosophy identifies as God"

And atheistic philosophy identifies the necessary being with the multiplicity of particles and forces.

That is why Prima, Secunda and Tertia via have an atheistic counterpart, for those divorcing Prima via from Geocentrism.

That is why Quarta and Quinta via for the atheists ultimately aren't meaningless, but if they went beyond the text of St Thomas, they would replace "orderer" with "failure of all that can fail" (in biology known as natural selection, death) and "most noble per se" with "most evolved".

Hence the urgency of defending intelligent design and geocentrism. And if you do that, you can as well defend Young Earth Creationism too.

6:34 "unlimited in its being"

1) Less obvious, by far, than "if the universe moves around Earth, something is moving it and if the stars don't collide, someone has ordered them"

2) An atheist could argue that a quantum particle is "unlimited in its being" and its limits are only meta-limits, due to the existence of other particles, which in and of itself is how quantum physics approaches limitless existence.

VI

Up to 7:07

"gravity is finite" - Hawking was speaking of the law of gravity, which he pretends is universal, all over the universe
"gravity is variable" - but Mm/d^2*constant is not variable
"gravity of itself is not that which exists through the power of its own essence" - what Hawking denied
"and it's ludicrous that something like it within the universe is itself the cause of the being of the universe" - he would of course say it encompasses the universe.

If we can say it doesn't, how can we - how can you - defend using gravity as a universal truth the application of which primes over empirical evidence for geocentricity?

I am not defending that. Some American Catholics are.

VII

7:59 "within that framework, I'm not going to find a deity"

No, not a deity. But certainly more than one very obvious God-did-it.

8:06-08 "God is not a force within the observable measurable cosmos"

In a sense He is, if He distinguishes miracles from ordinary events.

In a sense He is, if certain things within the observable cosmos are directly produced by Him and others only indirectly.

You are verging on interpreting Tertia Via in such a Pantheistic way as to clearly impinge on Prima Via.

8:31 "no one thinks God is a ... you're going to find within the universe"

Well, if not God, then very immediate traces of God.

LIKE, on the Thomasic and Geocentric view, the daily motion of the Universe around us.

Obviously, denying this is in conflict with the theorem that there are only a finite number of moved movers.

Some moved mover is not moved indirectly by the unmoved one and directly only by another moved mover. Some moved mover is moved directly by the unmoved one.

Deny that, you pull away the very basis for concluding there is an unmoved one, since you have admitted in principle a clear possibility of an infinite series of moved movers.

Fighting Totalitarian takeovers?

"Just war doctrine attempts to define situations wherein the waging of war becomes a moral necessity. It lays out criteria by which a Christian is intended to determine whether or not a specific war was entered into and is conducted in a virtuous manner, that killing becomes a moral necessity. The doctrine was developed by theologians of great influence in much of non-Orthodox Western Christianity, such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. This principle was the underpinning of Roman Catholic doctrinal support for the Crusades, presumably including the Fourth Crusade."

Pope Innocent III certainly thought that the war he was planning against the Saracens was just: not that the sack of Constantinople, which he had expressly forbidden, was; though he took advantage of that injustice after it was committed. A doctrine does not cease to be true because it can be or even has been misapplied.

"By contrast, Orthodox Christianity has never developed an explicit "just war" doctrine, and the weight of Tradition is that the taking of human life is never a morally edifying act, although circumstances may require that such an act be taken, it would only be as an alternative to an even greater evil."

The Roman Catholic doctrine about just war IS precisely that war is only just when the alternative is a greater evil, i e an extremely unjust "peace" tantamount to slavery under robbers or something like that. It may be added that one of the criteria is a reasonable hope to really avoid the evils greater than those of not fighting.